“Put Yourself in my Shoes” is a program to strengthen the theory of mind abilities in primary school children, created by a group of researchers from the University of Pavia (LASC), and to be used by teachers, educators, and workers in their daily activities with children.

THE ADVANTAGES OF USING THE THEORY OF MIND AT SCHOOL

Frequently, teachers and educators lament about the general difficulty their students have with “seeing things from another point of view,” recognizing others’ needs and being aware of them.

In this context, the theory of mind—that is, the capacity to put yourself in another’s place—represents a resource for the individual’s ability to develop and maintain good relationships with others (both dyadic and in a group) in the home and at school, with teachers and classmates, improving social competence.

In the school context, a connection between theory of mind and academic achievement was noted. In particular, theory of mind seems to influence reading comprehension ability, the area of metacognition, and sensitivity to criticism.

The recognition of the importance of the theory of mind for the development of social, relational and cognitive skills of the child, has led researchers to develop intervention programs to promote this ability.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

In detail, “Put Yourself in my Shoes” is made up of 6 work units. The subject of each unit is a specific manifestation of the theory of mind for the primary school age group

• Understanding second-order false beliefs: the child learns to think about what person X thinks of person Y’s thoughts
• Understanding of persuasion: the child learns to reason about the affects of his/her words on the behaviour of others and how to use the mechanism of persuasion to his/her advantage
• Understanding social gaffes: a situation where person X offends, or hurts person Y unintentionally
• Understanding sarcasm: the child learns to recognize the contrast between the objective meaning of a sentence and the real meaning that the speaker intended to convey
• Understanding the double bluff: having matured during the last years of primary school, the child assumes that if person X knows that person Y believes that X will lie, person X can deceive person Y by telling the truth
• Understanding misunderstandings: these occur when two people who interact have such different thoughts and beliefs about the same event that they can not understand each other. This happens because people have different information about the situation, as they have seen, known, read or heard different things

In the workbook section “Put Yourself in my Shoes—Worksheets for the Child”, there are two stories for each of the six categories: an initial story, and one for consolidation. They have been put in order based on a sequence of increasingly complex situations

Each story is followed by three types of exercises, each one indicated by a specific icon:

• Comprehension Questions – The questions, of which there are usually 5, have the objective of deepening the level of understanding of the sates of mind of the characters from the story and the connections between them and the events in the story itself. Example»
• Words of the mind -  a linguistic exercise with the objective of improving children’s awareness regarding the meaning of terminology indicated states of mind. Example»
• Put Yourself in my Shoes – proposes the significant moments from the story in graphic form in order to make children more aware of states of mind, and train them to express themselves Example»
  

To facilitate learning for the child and provide a conscious execution of the program by the teacher, two points of study for each story are also proposed:

• Let’s reflect together – points of reflection with the aim of facilitating the general topics learned
• What did I learn? – explicitly and very briefly explains the main learning goals that the child has acquired with that specific story. Example»

In the section “Put Yourself in my Shoes – Indications for the teacher/educator", some schemes of work have been proposed for each activity that present a scheme to set up the discussion following each of the three exercises in order to support the teachers in the application of the program. Example»

These schemes of work are intended to be used as a general point of reference, but can be modified and adapted according to the responses of the children and the level of the class as a whole, provided that the general principle of explaining the mental states underlying the behavior of the characters is maintained.